the silence and the roar by nihad sirees

Even if they did not own everything, they insisted in being involved in order for any project to get off the ground. We in Aleppo knew all too well how a financial clique that was close-to-home, close to the regime, and allied with the security services had its hands all over the economy. This is to say nothing of the political and party-based monopoly. Nihad Sirees (NS): Who even thought that Syria would revolt against the regime of the al-Assad clan prior to March 2011 in Aleppo or anywhere else? Before the revolution, Bashar al-Assad had a respectable amount of popularity despite the fact that everybody knew Syria was a security state, that corruption and plunder of the country were widespread, and that there was a master plan to transform the economy into a capitalist one. What is your interpretation for how late Aleppo joined the revolution? Yusuf Akkawi (YA): You are from Aleppo, and you lived there during some of the revolution. Sirees witnessed the explosion of the revolution in his country but then concluded that he had to free himself from all the immediate dangers, and that getting some distance would help his writing and his optimism.

The most well-known of all his works, though, was The Silk Market, the memorable television serial that narrated a period of the political history of that city, and through it a chapter of the history of Syria. From Northern Winds to The Girls, and even The Silence and the Roar, which does not belong to any clear time or place but between the lines of which it is not too hard to glean that embattled city.

It can be said without hesitation that Nihad Sirees is an Aleppine writer, not because he hails from that city and lived there for most of his life, but because the bulk of his writing starts there and orbits in its universe. Writing, Revolution, and Change in Syria: An Interview with Nihad Sirees

The silence and the roar by nihad sirees